Newcastle

Newcastle is a beautiful city, both modern and old. It was the first stop in the ninth country of my journey around the world (Russia doesn't count). The highlight of the city was really walking past St. James Park and officially adopting Newcastle United as my official favourite football club. Enjoy a few of the sights from around town.

The old City Wall

St. James Park

I love cobblestone streets

My brand new Newcastle United football jersey

Taking Off

One of the problems with living in Mongolia is that there are few flight options when leaving. Also, you are required to fly out of the somewhat unreliable Chinggis Khaan International Airport.

My plane was set to be the first to depart for our Christmas vacations, scheduled for 7:50 am en route to London, UK via Moscow. Sadly, the flight was delayed until about 11:00, causing me to miss my connecting flight in Moscow. I was originally scheduled to land just after noon, but I was now going to have to take the 2:00 flight out of Moscow, which would be a very tight connection in an airport that I have never seen before.

Before I continue, I should mention that I was flying with Aeroflot, Russia's national carrier. If this is ever an option, DO NOT TAKE IT!! The plane was an old Soviet jet liner that looked to have been built in 1950, and hadn't been maintained since. Despite the terrifying appearance of the plane and the absolute lack of leg room (about 4 inches less than a standard economy seat), I was at least on a plane.

An hour into our 7 hour flight, the plane begins to descend. Of course, I couldn't understand a word of the announcement, so I became a little... unnerved. It turns out that we were landing at Irkutsk's not-so-international airport to... wait for it... refuel. How did we need to refuel an hour into a 7 hour flight? After the hour-long wait on the tarmac, it became obvious to me that I was not going to make the next connection in Moscow either. Not having a Russian visa, I was starting to worry a great deal about spending the night in what turns out to be the most expensive airport in the world.

Finally, with the refuelling completed, we lifted off again for the remaining 6 hours of our entertainment-free, alcohol-free, sleep-free flight. Luckily I sat next to a lovely woman with whom I had the most interesting of conversations. She did not speak a word of English, however; she did speak fluent Mongolian (not really a surprise for a Mongolian to speak fluent Mongolia) and French. I speak terrible Mongolian and enough French to communicate. It turns out that my French is far better than I thought, as we continued our small-talk conversation for most of the trip.

After a very long, uncomfortable 6 hours, we landed in Moscow, where I'm pretty sure the pilot got lost driving the plane around. We spent literally 30 minutes driving around the tarmac. After we entered the airport we had to stand in the long, tedious line where they booked everyone for new flights. After spending 3 hours in this line, before passing through security, I found that I had another 3 hours to wait before my next flight would leave. So, to pass the time, Charlie, an Englishman whom I befriended in the airport in Ulaanbaatar, and I sat down for a couple of beers. Having left UB, I was carrying USD only, and Charlie only had USD and British Pounds. The problem - the airport bar only accepts rubles. The second problem - the only way to exchange money is at a machine that wouldn't exchange any money. Finally, we settled on getting a few beers from one of the stands in the airport. Fortunately, the airline didn't have any problem with carrying open alcohol onto the plane.

After a very long journey, thus far, I boarded my plane 3 hours after I was supposed to arrive in London. The following flight was again entertainment-free, but came with substantially more leg room. The nearly 5 hour flight finally got me to London 8 hours after I was originally set to arrive, ending the chance to drive up to Newcastle that day.

The Land of the Rising Sun

Country number eight is officially in the books.

I flew into Narita on August 18 after what works out to be a 34 hr trip (include time changes). After arriving, I took a 4 hr journey - although it only had to be 2 - on the train to get to the Zushi station to meet my friend Ryan Kowalchuk. Since he has a second apartment for the month due to "clerical error" I had a free place to stay for the two nights. Thankfully, he met me with "beer" (to be explained little later). We went out for some food, before I had to go to bed, since I was a little tired from the trip. The next day, I went off to see the temples of Kamakura. There are 140 temples in the area, and I saw about a dozen of them, and went down to the beach in Hase. That night I met up with Ryan and his girlfriend and went out in Yokohama, the second largest city in Japan at night (apparently Osaka is bigger during the day). We had some dinner, and went out for some more adult beverages. By which, I mean we sat on the patio of one of the variety stores, and drank more "beer". To explain this a little further, Japan has beer and synthetic beer flavoured beverages that have alcohol added. Tastes better than some of the beer I've had in the past. Also, It turns out that this is a common thing. The patio was at standing room only!! Since I flew out at 1:30 the next day, I boarded the airport express at 8:07, and arrived at the airport at exactly 10:30. Couldn't have planned it better if I tried. Sadly, my only sushi experience came in an airport restaurant, but it was still the best sushi I've ever eaten.

The private shrine outside my apartment.

There really ARE vending machines everywhere.

Inside the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Temple

The giant copper Buddha at Diabatsu

The stairway to Sasukeinarijinja Shrine

A small piece of my favourite, the Kosokuji Temple.

Isn't this the cutest statue ever?!? Found at the overly popular Hasedera Temple. Oddly, the Kosokuji Temple was completely vacant, while only a 1 minute walk from Hasedera which had a hundred or so people at it.

A jellyfish on Yuigahama Beach in Hase. The sand was extremely fine, but also black. I assume this is due to the volcanoes that formed the islands.

Me. Ryan.

The "beer".

About time

My International adventures will take on brand new heights in this next year. It starts with a visit to Tokyo, Japan in just a few days' time. Fortunately, my old friend Ryan lives in Tokyo, and has offered a spare apartment to me for the two nights. Since he will be working through the days, it will give me an opportunity to go explore a bit on my own and then meet up with him in the evenings. I expect it to be much like my time in Seoul, but with fewer Canadians.

In December and January, I will be traveling to Europe for the first time. I will be flying in to London (via Moscow) to spend five days in jolly old England. Once again, I will have a tour guide, as my girlfriend is from England. We will spend Christmas day with her family (what a day to meet the parents) and will take off for the continent the next morning. We plan on a couple of days in Amsterdam, one in Brussels, two or three in Paris, one in Lyon and finally a couple in Barcelona before getting back to London in time for us to fly off to our respective countries of employment for another 6 months away from each other.

In addition to the 7 countries I have already stepped foot in (past the airport) I will be adding numbers 8-13 to my list by early January. And no, I am not including Russia since I will not be leaving the airport at any point.

I'll be back in a week with my stories from Tokyo!!

Funny Pictures

As this concludes my vacation, I'll leave you with some pictures that I found amusing.

How to eat pancakes:

1. put food on plate while holding knife and fork

2. put pancake on fork.

Thanks McDonald's.

What kind of napkins?

So, exactly how many times is that chicken fried?

Who needs a stork when you can have your very own baby tree?

Who says cartoon characters are fake? Actually, it's part of one of the presidential election candidates' campaign. They all have them, and pop songs too.

I'm not sure what's forbidden here. Babies in grown-up clothes?

Yes, it is exactly what it looks like. A scorpion in a cobra's mouth.

It scares me that one of the features is hygiene.

The view from our window in Siem Reap: the hallway.

What exactly is David suggesting I drink here?

A beautiful view of...

...these trees.

Both the best and the worst shorts ever.

At Angkor, they feel that they should instruct you on how to use the bathroom. Is the 4th picture really telling people not to shower in the toilet?

Anything you need, just go to the.... 7 twenty???

I don't think I'd trust a sign that read "To That Way."

It's nice that Ganesh celebrates Christmas too.

My house guest. Actually it turns out there was a family of 6 living inside the wall. They are Golden Tree Snakes... and as I later discovered, they ARE poisonous.

You may NOT go 10 km/h. Any other speed is fine though. It clearly fails to state what the maximum speed is.

How many chocolates is that?

Menu item #9: Crap Stick. Seriously.

Bangkok, Once Again

So, after a 15 hr. boat/bus ride back to Bangkok we went back to Koh San Road for one more night before flying out the next night. Of course, without my glasses, I couldn't really see anything, so what you see is what I saw. The only way for me to see anything was through my camera. Enjoy.

Partying at Had Rin Beach

Since we were spending 6 days in Koh Phangan, we felt it was nothing short of essential to drink ourselves stupid while attending the spectacular parties found along the Southeaster point of the island. The beach was about a 15 min. ride in the bizarre cabs (they were really pickup trucks with benches in the back). What is important to realize that our fourth night there was New Year's Eve, and the Full Moon Party on New Year's is one of the largest parties in the world. There were easily ten to fifteen thousand people crammed onto the beach (and it was high tide). The people here have come up with one of the world's greatest inventions: the bucket. For about $7, you can purchase one of these buckets, which are a child's sand pail, filled with ice, a mickey of various types of alcohol (I chose vodka), a red bull, and another choice of orange juice, coke, sprite or two more red bulls. The put about 20 straws in your bucket, and off you go. Now this isn't like there are a few of these booths. There are literally hundreds of them, all with "creative" names. My favourite was the Bethlehem Booth, with the slogan "Jesus' choice". I went for the one called "Pukky's" as it was sandwiched between two other booths with the names of people we were with.

The first night we went down with Brent, and met up with his friend Luke. To my surprise, there were a couple thousand people in attendance 2 days before the big party. We found some seats with some Australian girls, rented the Hukka, or Shisha, and danced the night away. We returned to our bungalows around 4 o'clock in the morning. As mentioned in my last post, this was my sober night, since I brought the bike to the beach.

The second night, we went to the Amsterdam bar with a few of the guys from the resort, before heading down to the beach for the night. On this night, I came up with the genius plan of "bring nothing than can get lost". I tied my keys into my new Thai pants, wore no t-shirt, and nothing upon my feet. I only had a small pocket on my pants, and unfortunately sometime after 4:00 I had my last 100 Baht (about $30) that I had brought with me picked from my pocket.

The following day was New Year's Eve. I went with my "nothing you can lose" policy again. This time, I pre-purchased my buckets from Pukky- you need to understand that these people remember everyone and everything, to the point where she could spot me 300 feet away through a crowd of people, and would yell my name out. I pre-bought 5 buckets, taking 1 and coming back for the others later. The night was the biggest, best party I have ever attended, despite a couple of negative side-effects. What side effects?

#1 - I was dancing on a table (you already know how much alcohol I was drinking) with a rather attractive girl (also explains the dancing on the table), but the table only had 3 legs. The problem is not that WE didn't know about the missing leg, actually we were just fine. When this became a problem was when some doorknob decided to jump on the side of the table that was empty. Of course, it was empty because THERE WAS NO LEG. As soon as this moron had his weight on the table, the whole thing fell over. As there were other benches and tables around (plus I still had a full bucket in my hand) I knew that trying to break my fall with my arms was going to end up in a bad situation. Instead, I fell in a sitting position, smacking my back on the sand-covered table, which resulting in essentially sandpapering the skin off much of my back. I also cracked 2 of my ribs. Thank goodness for the alcohol. Now, if you're one of my college friend, or even one of my Sarnia buddies, you're probably thinking "You didn't drop the bucket, did you?" The answer - not even a drop.

#2 - In my genius plan to bring nothing I could lose, I forgot about one thing - my glasses. As the night progress, and it was probably around 2:00 or so (it was awhile after the midnight fireworks went off about 20 feet over my head), I decided to go in the ocean with a nice, Australian girl I was talking to (not the same the previous ones), but completely forgot that I was wearing my glasses. I got hit by a large wave, and realized they were not on my head. I had handed the few things I had with me to Andrew, so I went over and asked if he had them. When he said "no", I realized my error. Of course, now my glasses were/are somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and there was nothing I could do about it. How did I handle this? I went back to Pukky and got another one of my buckets. The rest of vacation is a bit of a blur (literally) as I couldn't see anything, and experience vertigo from the inability to focus on anything. When I got back to Ulaanbaatar, I bought some pretty awesome ones, so it all worked out rather well.